Still thinking of vanity, it’s interesting the way it manifests in different cultures yet differences are purely cosmetic. For example native tribesmen with bone piercing to the lips, ears and nose really are no different from the guy next door who has his nipples, eyebrow, nose and lip pierced. It seems the world over humans are intent of altering appearance for power and authority image, sexual appeal, fear of aging, religions reasons or just plan whacky reasons.
My parents were both 'glamorous' in the sense they wore the 'right' clothes, posed as models and gave the generally conserved idea of beauty and pose to the outside world. But once the front door closed on the outside world the image vanished. My father would look on in horror while his beautiful wife removed her stylish dresses, panti girdle and underwear, wiped off the makeup, piled her luxurious long back hair up in curlers tied with a scarf and put on a garish baggy gown and housecoat. Father would sigh heavily, shake his head and mutter under his breath about the beautiful woman the outside world got and the old hag he had. Somehow despite that they had a long enduring marriage.

Aged 17 I spotted what appeared to me then as the perfect male specimen. A punk rocker with spiked multi coloured hair and a grin to die for. In comparison I was short, not the slimmest girl in the neighbourhood, dressed conservatively with the most disgustingly thick, highly frizzy, long ginger hair and knew something drastic was needed if I hoped to catch my dream punks attention. My parents would never have agreed to allow me to have a trendy hair cut or use perminant hair dye, it so seemed the perfect solution when someone suggested using food colouring instead. Of course I assumed it would wash off without much trouble so I leapt at the idea. That evening armed with a collection of yellow, green, blue, red and black food colouring I set to work . After washing and towel drying my hair I carefully applied each colour to separate sections of hair, not thinking about wearing rubber gloves or considering each un-dried section might run. After about an hour work I looked into the mirror and almost fainted. Not only had the colouring run on my hands and wouldn’t wash off wet colourings had blended together and turned a strange blue/green shade and covered my entire scalp, worse it had run in streams down from my forehead right down my face and neck and no amount of scrubbing would get it off my scalp and skin. I’d a Saturday job the next day and had to face my friends, customers and the punk. Needless to say he noticed me alright, he almost died laughing, My skin tone almost matched my surname which caused greater hilarity. I hadn't heard of Lloyd Webber's musical “ Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” but thereafter people who knew me would habitually burst into song. “Bring me the head of many colours”. I’ve still not seen the musical, didn’t watch Lloyd Webber’s search for Joseph , totally went off punks and still cringe at the memory of my folly. On the plus side it taught me the best way to appeal to other people is not through expenisive clothes, makeup hairsyles or actions but to be myself.